


i'm not hungry

by PaintedVanilla



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Autistic Crowley (Good Omens), Comfort Food, Established Relationship, Food, Food Issues, M/M, Romantic Gestures, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 16:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20213092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedVanilla/pseuds/PaintedVanilla
Summary: There’s not a restaurant anywhere near their cottage that serves anything Crowley can eat.





	i'm not hungry

**Author's Note:**

> **before you read !!**
> 
> this fic could be potentially triggering to people with eating disorders as it contains a character who goes an _extremely_ long amount of time without eating anything. it's not harmful to him because he's a celestial being who doesn't need to eat to survive, but it might be triggering to some. the fic also contains a fairly generous description of various foods, so please tread at your own risk !! <3
> 
> alternate title for this fic: crowley is autistic and this impacts what he can eat, and i assign him all of my favorite foods.

Crowley can’t eat here.

There are a great many things Aziraphale loves about their cottage in South Downs. It’s tucked away, right on the coast, the nearest neighbors a good distance; not hard to travel to by car, but it certainly takes a minute on foot. Aziraphale’s books are all neatly stored, alphabetized and labeled correctly. There are several houseplants littering the cottage, and outside a very beautiful garden that Crowley tends to religiously. More so than anything, though, it’s _ their _space; it’s theirs and theirs alone, no one else to invade it or scare them out of it or make them feel guilty for wanting to spend entire evenings wrapped up in each other’s arms.

The only problem is that Crowley can’t eat here.

The town is small; only a handful of restaurants to pick from when they decide to go out. Even the next town over, which is larger, has a dismal selection. Crowley can’t eat at any of them.

He’s privy to texture; if the texture of the food is _ wrong, _he simply can’t bring himself to eat it. It’s difficult for him to describe what makes a texture wrong. Oftentimes, when he bites into something and cringes, spitting it out into his napkin, he lets Aziraphale have what he didn’t eat. Aziraphale has never found anything wrong with the food Crowley has passed over to him. It’s usually quite delicious. But Crowley can’t stand something about it, so he avoids it. 

There’s not a restaurant anywhere near their cottage that serves anything Crowley can eat. Which is fine; he doesn’t need to eat. He’s never once complained about it. Still, there’s something about the picture where Aziraphale gets to eat an entire meal while his husband sits across from him sipping a glass of water and staring at him that Aziraphale doesn't like. Crowley never stares with malice, or with jealousy; in fact, he quite likes watching Aziraphale eat. He likes it when his angel enjoys himself; he likes to watch him _ indulge. _Aziraphale knows he shouldn’t feel guilty when they go out, but he can’t help himself. He wants to treat Crowley to a nice meal. 

Crowley doesn’t even eat at home; even when he cooks, spends most of the evening in the kitchen, he’s never able to produce something he likes. Aziraphale always loves it; loves what he makes, how he makes it look pretty on the plate and how the smell of it fills the house for the rest of the evening. Crowley can’t eat his own cooking, though; he can’t put his finger on what makes the food he _ can _eat okay to eat. He just knows when something is good and when something is bad. 

Crowley doesn’t seem to mind that much, even though he hasn’t had a proper meal in the ten years since they’ve moved to their little cottage. He doesn’t go hungry, he just turns his appetite off. Whatever human instinct that causes the mouth to water when smelling garlic being cooked, he’s more than used to keeping at bay. 

Even in London, where he had pinpointed restaurants that he could eat from, he didn’t eat that often. He’d still sit across from Aziraphale and watch him eat, not bothering to indulge himself. And even so, when he did let Aziraphale take him somewhere that served something edible, the angel suspected he never ate quite as much as he wanted to. When he did let his body feel hungry, it should have been _ starving, _but he never ate much. He has an obsession with looking cool, and perhaps he thinks eating however much food it would take to make him full while in public wouldn’t be very attractive of him. 

Aziraphale does wonder just how hungry he is, if he would bother to let himself feel it. All he’s had for ten years are bites of food he’s quickly spit back out, glasses of wine and the occasional cup of coffee that he never manages to finish. 

Aziraphale would like him to have a nice meal. But whenever he brings it up Crowley waves him off and insists there’s nothing around that he likes, and he doesn’t want to go back into London.

“I’m not hungry,” he always tells Aziraphale.

“If you’d let yourself be hungry for just a moment—” Aziraphale always tries to say.

“Angel, if I let myself feel hungry, I’ll just be torturing myself, there’s nothing for me to eat,” Crowley always points out.

“What do you suppose you’d be in the mood for if you _ were _hungry, though?” Aziraphale always asks.

“Dunno,” Crowley always tells him. “I’m not hungry.”

But Aziraphale wants to treat his husband, dammit, and if Crowley won’t let himself be hungry to tell him what he wants, then Aziraphale will just have to give him options.

Crowley wakes up alone in bed, very disgruntled by this. He puts on his robe and finds a note taped to the fridge about needing to take care of some things at the shop, and not wanting to bother Crowley for the drive. He does, however, ask Crowley to do a couple things in town, if he would be so kind.

Crowley will not voluntarily call himself kind, but he snatches the list off the fridge and goes to get dressed, anyway. 

There are five restaurants in London that Crowley can eat at. 

The first that Aziraphale stops in at is a diner. The old woman at the hostess counter recognizes him, sitting up and offering him a smile. There are more lines on her face than the last time Aziraphale came in, which is to be expected, since that was almost ten years ago. The sight of it makes him vaguely sad, but he tries not to let it bother him.

“How’s your husband?” she asks warmly.

“He’s doing well,” Aziraphale tells her. “He stayed home. I’m out picking up lunch.”

“How sweet of you,” she tells him.

Aziraphale gets two orders of the same meal: chicken strips with no side. Aziraphale always ends up eating the fries because Crowley can’t, but today isn’t about him. The chicken is always the perfect temperature, the breading flakey and only somewhat crunchy in certain areas. Crowley can pull it apart to make sure there aren’t any pieces of tendon, and he doesn’t have to pull it apart with his mouth.

The real kicker, however, is the sauce. Crowley always gets the same sauce: a mixture of buffalo and blue cheese. He’s always very generous when dipping. It’s his favorite part of the meal. 

Aziraphale pays for the food in to-go containers and leaves a generous tip, and once he’s made it back to the shop, he miracles the food into the fridge at home. Even though it’s in the fridge, it will stay the perfect temperature because Aziraphale expects it to.

His second stop is an Italian restaurant tucked away so well, it’s almost impossible to find if you don’t know where to look. The owner greets Aziraphale happily, looking older than he did last time he was by.

“Where’s your husband?” he asks cheerfully.

“Stayed home,” Aziraphale explains. “I’m supposed to be surprising him.”

The owner remembers Crowley’s order. Cheese ravioli with white sauce instead of red. Crowley isn’t entirely sure what sort of cheese is in the pasta, but he hasn’t bothered to ask; all he cares about is that it's good and he can eat it. 

Aziraphale asks for two orders.

“That’s not what you usually get,” the owner notices.

“Taking some inspiration from him,” Aziraphale says.

Aziraphale returns to his shop, miracles the food to their cottage, and moves on to the next store.

Aziraphale loves sushi very much, and every time he would ask Crowley to have it with him, they would go to the same place. Specifically because, here, there’s not one, but _ two _ rolls that Crowley can eat; the crunchy roll and the Philadelphia roll. Aziraphale always loved to watch him, because the demon always made an _ attempt _not to eat them fast, but he always ended up finished long before Aziraphale. This was due in part to the fact that Aziraphale never felt bad about ordering as much food as he was in the mood for; Crowley, on the other hand, worried it would be terribly unattractive of him to order more than one serving of each roll, or to return to the counter to order seconds. 

Aziraphale didn’t think this would be unattractive at all; he wished Crowley would indulge more, but he supposes he could always miracle his hunger away if it wasn’t entirely sated by his meal. Either way, Aziraphale orders a lot of sushi.

The fourth destination is a Vietnamese restaurant; truthfully, there are a lot of things there that Aziraphale wouldn’t mind ordering for himself, but he stops and reminds himself that this is about his husband, and he’s very happy to be doing it for him. The woman behind the counter, who had been in her mid-twenties when the restaurant had first opened, but is now much older, positively lights up when she spots Aziraphale.

“It’s been so long!” she exclaims, dashing around the counter to give him a hug. “You two are my only regulars who’ve stopped coming in! Where’d you go?”

“We moved,” Aziraphale says, his tone apologetic.

“And you couldn’t make the drive?” she asks, feigning offense.

“I assure you, I think about your food every day,” Aziraphale tells her.

She beams, walking back around the register. “What can I get for you while you’re in town?”

Aziraphale hesitates. Dumplings come five to an order. Crowley likes them fried; there’s just enough crunch on the outside to make it pleasant, but never so much that it scratches up the roof of his mouth or becomes too loud. Pair them with the restaurants signature sauce and Crowley practically melts when he takes a bite.

Aziraphale wonders how many he should ask for. When he finally lands on a number, he smiles apologetically before he orders.

His last stop isn’t actually a restaurant at all; it’s a bakery. The teenager behind the counter doesn’t recognize him; none of the employees do, but the space and the food still looks the same. Aziraphale can only hope they haven’t changed their recipes. 

She sells him a devil’s food cake, Crowley’s favorite dessert on Earth, and stares with rather wide eyes when he slips quite a large amount of money into the tip jar.

Crowley is dozing on the couch when Aziraphale gets home. He stirs when he hears Aziraphale in the kitchen, sitting up. “Angel?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Aziraphale calls back; he cracks open the fridge to make sure everything is there. It all remains undiscovered and untouched; Crowley doesn’t have much of a reason to open the fridge, after all. 

He slides into the living room. Crowley has sat up, rubbing his eyes. “How’s the shop?” he asks, his voice thick with sleep.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. “All well and good.”

“Gotten everything taken care of, then?” Crowley asks.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, vaguely smug. “How about we go to dinner?”

Crowley blinks; a rare occurrence. “Alright,” he says, standing. “Where to?”

“You decide,” Aziraphale insists. “What are you in the mood for?”

Crowley frowns at him. “Nothing, angel. We can go wherever you like.”

“Why don’t we go wherever _ you _like?”

Crowley sighs. “I’m not hungry, sweetheart. We’ve been over this a thousand times.”

“But if you _were_ hungry,” Aziraphale presses, “what would you want?”

Crowley rubs his face. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like thinking about it.”

“Indulge me,” Aziraphale pleads. “Crowley, please.”

Crowley glances at him, and immediately relents. “Oh, alright,” he says, sitting back down on the couch. He concentrates, and then shuts his eyes as an incredibly intense wave of hunger washes over him.

He thinks for a moment, then hisses. “Oh, you know what I want?”

“What?” Aziraphale asks, practically bouncing on his feet. 

Crowley doesn’t notice. “Do you remember that thing my neighbor used to make?”

Aziraphale freezes. “What?”

“My neighbor, Miss— what’s her name… Salinas!” Crowley snaps his fingers with recognition. “She used to make that thing, it was— it was shredded chicken, and buffalo sauce, and cream cheese all mixed together? Oh, fuck, angel, if I could have anything in the world right now, that’d be it.”

Aziraphale is quiet for a long moment. _ “Dammit.” _

“What?” Crowley asks, his head snapping up at the sound of Aziraphale cussing.

“I thought of _ everything!” _ Aziraphale exclaims, obviously distressed. “Everything except that! I didn’t even _ think _about that!”

“What are you on about?” Crowley asks, frowning.

“I wasn’t checking on the shop!” Aziraphale whines. “I was in London but— I was trying to surprise you! I got you everything you like, except for the one thing you want!”

Crowley stares at him for a long time. “You got me food?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, somewhat miserably. “All your favorites, from all the right places. But if they’re not what you’re craving—”

“Where?”

Aziraphale pauses. “Hm?”

Crowley is sitting on the edge of the couch. He looks about ready to pounce on him. “Where?”

“Where what?” Aziraphale asks.

“Where _ is _it?” Crowley asks, his patience tethered to him with a fraying string. “Where’s the food?”

Aziraphale straightens, realizing his plan might not be ruined after all. He smiles smugly. “I thought you weren’t hungry.”

“Angel,” Crowley says quietly. “I’m fucking starving.”

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment if you enjoyed!! you can find me on [tumblr](https://paintedvanilla.tumblr.com/) :0)


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